Explanation:
Why is this giant crater on Mimas oddly colored?
Mimas, one of the
smaller round moons of Saturn, sports
Herschel crater, one of the larger impact craters in the entire Solar System.
The robotic
Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn took the
above image of Herschel crater in unprecedented detail while making a 10,000-kilometer
record close pass by the
icy world
just over one month ago.
Shown in contrast-enhanced false color, the
above image includes color information from older
Mimas images that together
show more clearly that Herschel's landscape is colored slightly differently from
more
heavily cratered terrain nearby.
The color difference could yield surface composition clues to the violent history
of
Mimas.
An impact
on Mimas much larger than the one that created the 130-kilometer Herschel would likely
have destroyed the entire world.